Abstract

A cardinal feature of constitutional theory in the United Kingdom is that police officers and soldiers are subject to the ordinary law of the land even when acting in their official capacity.1 If they are accused of committing a criminal offence when effecting an arrest, acting to prevent a crime or seeking to restore public order, their liability will be determined on exactly the same principles that would apply if they were ordinary citizens. In other words they do not benefit from any special privilege or immunity if they unlawfully kill or injure a person while acting in the course of their duty. The standards set by the criminal law apply to them in exactly the same manner as they apply to ordinary citizens. Of course the law does confer a range of powers on police officers and soldiers which enable them to act coercively in situations which would be beyond the legal capacity of ordinary citizens. That, however, does not detract from the general principle that if soldiers or police officers act beyond the limits of these powers in the course of their duty their criminal liability will be assessed on the same basis as that of ordinary citizens.KeywordsPolice OfficerCriminal LiabilityOrdinary CitizenSecurity ForceJoint EnterpriseThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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